Bataan Death March: A WWII vet walked to survive

Those two themes run through the family of James Downey Jr., two positives that grew from one of the darkest chapters of American military history.

Downey was a young solder in the prime of life, six years removed from an Olympic team tryout, when Japanese soldiers captured him on April 9, 1942. He was put in line with thousands of other prisoners and ordered to start walking.

The rule was simple: Stop and you die.

It became known as the Bataan Death March, and Downey did not give up. Today he is 95 years old with a firm handshake and a memory for detail that is both inspirational and chilling.

The Bataan Death March began after some 75,000 troops under American command surrendered to Japanese forces in the Philippines. The forcible march to a Japanese POW camp covered 60 miles and lasted more than five days.

By some estimates, 11,000 died.

Men were shot, beaten to death, beheaded or stabbed. Even today, Downey cannot shake the images.

"A lot of my friends died along the way," he said. "And sometimes a Japanese tank would go over — Oh God — you'd see them along the road. It was terrible."

His son, Gary Downey, said the themes of never giving up and always helping a brother were impressed upon the children at an early age.

"This journey that happened to him on Bataan, it still continues for him," Gary said. "Dad has sort of gathered people along the way with that, made friends."

In reunions all over the country, the children of Bataan survivors "have that same, never-give-up attitude," Gary Downey said.

James Downey enlisted in the Army in 1934 and he tried out for the 1936 U.S. Olympic team as a swimmer in the backstroke.

He was half-Filipino by birth. His mother was of Philippine and Spanish heritage and his father was from Augusta County, a cavalry officer who fought in the Spanish-American War.

Downey served with the Army's 26th Calvary Philippine Scouts, a decorated unit that still rode horses into battle in the early days of World War II. In January 1942 on Luzon Island, the 26th made what is regarded as the final horse-mounted charge in the annals of the U.S. military.

Downey was on patrol on April 9 when he was captured.

"We came up and I met a Japanese," he recalled. "He said, 'War over!' waving his arms. We slept by a river that night and the next day they lined us up."

Captured along with his brother, they began marching the next day. The Japanese denied water to the POWs, even though it was sometimes within reach via artesian wells.

"If you were close by, they'd stick you with a bayonet," he said. "If you were far away, they'd shoot you."

Eventually, he and his brother made it to a POW camp, but they were gravely ill. Faith played a huge role in the will to live.

Today, Downey has a laminated picture of Jesus that he took from a Bible owned by a Filipino prisoner who died while holding it.

"I had a hard time getting it out of his hands," he said.

The horrific conditions in the camp were too much for Robert Downey, who died in June 1942 from malnutrition and disease, including dysentery.

A few months later, leaders in the Philippine government said they wanted to cooperate with the Japanese, and it resulted in the release of Filipino prisoners of war. Downey was an American, but was half-Filipino and the Japanese let him go.

He ended up living with his grandmother in another part of the country, but his freedom didn't last long. Someone turned him in as a Filipino guerrilla, and he was sent to a different prison camp.

He stayed in custody until 1945.

After the war, Downey stayed in the Army until 1963, retiring as a master sergeant.

He served a number of years at Fort Eustis in Newport News, where he met his wife, Frances, during a USO dance in 1946.

His wife died in 2006. She and James were married 57 years and had four children.

In one of his brighter memories, he recalls meeting his future wife at the dance. It was a moment where women reached out and tapped their partner.

"She tapped me," he said, laughing.

About the Bataan Death March On April 9, 1942, Major Gen. Edward P. King Jr., the commander of the Luzon Force, Bataan, Philippines, defied orders from Gen. Douglas MacArthur and surrendered to the Japanese.Over the next five days, the 75,000 prisoners — Americans and Filipinos — were forced-marched 60 miles to prison camps. They were denied food and water, and thousands were left to die or executed if they fell. Thousands more were killed by gunshot, bayonet and beheading.Estimates of the number of men killed range from 6,000 to more than 20,000.After the war, the Japanese commander, Gen. Masaharu Homma, was convicted of war crimes and executed.Top: A National Archives photo shows prisoners on the Bataan Death March with their hands tied behind their backs.

HBO's 'The Pacific' The HBO miniseries "The Pacific," airing at 9 p.m. Sundays, tells the story of World War II in the Pacific. As the series progresses, the Daily Press is also looking at stories from the Pacific Theater of Operations as told by our local veterans.